Damien Chazelle’s newest and boldest feature, Babylon acts as a sort of statement piece for Chazelle’s catalog (La La Land, Whiplash), reflecting the eternal nature of the industry it adores as much as it fears. With an $80 million budget, the film is allowed to portray the very nature of excess that so often leads to its demise, yet it’s this almost hypocritical situation that allows cast, crew, and audience to reflect equally on the same notion: Is cinema really dead?
While the short answer to that large question should be a resounding no, changing tides are rarely comfortable for those in their throes, leading many to feel like captains of a sinking ship, whether that’s realized in the moment or in hindsight. For Chazelle, this idea of artistic mortality is less one to be feared, and more of a challenge to be accepted. This is seen in practice throughout the more than three hours we’re given with Hollywood’s past residents in all their glory, as well as their shame.
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Babylon’s Cast of Characters
Paramount Pictures
Babylon follows a slew of characters vying for their chance at glory, as well as their stake in keeping it, through Hollywood’s true golden age. The film starts off in the year 1926, films are budding from a stigma of low-brow entertainment into something much more sophisticated as the medium increases in its complexity. Margot Robbie’s fictional Nellie LaRoy showcases rags-to-riches and the fall from grace accompanied by stardom, a sort of Dirk Diggler archetype with a bob and a Jersey accent if you will.
Brad Pitt shines as Jack Conrad, Hollywood’s (real) golden boy of the 1920s, and newcomer Diego Calva breathes normalcy into this boast of excess through his character Manny Torres, an aspiring actor turned studio executive. We’re shown the perspective of each of main character, and while they certainly vary, the film itself manages to cohesively hone in on the idea of impermanence and its blessings and curses.
Margot Robbie as the Tragic Nellie in Babylon
For Nellie, stardom is seen as achievable through a combination of natural instinct and pure talent. The version we meet is not so different from the one we leave once the credits are rolling, despite all the commotion in between. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and unabashed by what might be said around her name, she defines an American Dream that’s loftiness somehow manages to be outdone by reality. Fame, while garnered on her own terms, does not solely remain in her hands for long.
Riddled with a gambling addiction and a tendency to speak her mind, Nellie soon realizes the delicacy of the spotlight and how easily control of it can be lost. For Nellie, and the prodigy archetype she fleshes out, dreams of grandeur are shown to be the Achilles heel to the stars, fueled by its shiny promises. Our Nellie leaves the story almost as mysteriously as she arrived, and her timing of arrival in the party borders on tragic, as her golden years are seen in the rearview while they still have time left to unfold.
Jack Conrad and the Curse of Change
For Jack Conrad, and for so many innovators and progressives, his prime is seen to be ushered out on the basis upon which it was founded. New ideas and constant evolution are staples of any lasting medium, in this case the addition of sound to previously silent motion pictures at the turn of the then-decade. Subsequently, he and his aforementioned contemporary LaRoy see their pioneering heydays from behind a cloud of dust. A move in film history recorded as one of extreme turnover in cast lists, we see the apex predators of the industry suddenly impeded by an innovation seen as crucial almost a century removed.
We’re led to believe that Conrad’s career as well as his personage is one that once ushered in game-changing ideals in order to cement his name into the zeitgeist for what, in the moment, would feel like an eternity. As time marches on, we see that Conrad, as well as the innovations he may have been the face of, would eventually be seen in the rearview. It’s an uncomfortable truth for the debonair thespian whose trendiness seems to change as frequently as the women accompanying him throughout his tumultuous career.
Manny Torres as Hollywood’s Retrospect
The viewer can find some comfort and normalcy in the eyes of the film’s lead, Manny Torres, an aspiring actor hired by elitist macguffins who throw nightly parties rivaling that of a Jay Gatsby shindig. Manny’s arc somewhat parallels the viewers as the runtime of this film inches forward, as he is (and we are) first taken aback by the decadence and glitz of golden era Hollywood. An observer of the mess but never the maker of it, Manny’s left powerless to the temptations of glory that plague those around him.
The film’s final sequence essentially states in 10 minutes the thesis of what the past three hours have worked toward. Almost two decades removed from a life in show business (ushered out by force from Tobey Maguire’s James McKay), Manny returns to California with a new family and probably a new perspective, as well. Naturally he makes his way to the cinema, in which he sees features he had a hand in on the silver screen once again, followed by a montage of emotional breakdown and borderline overstimulating reasoning for the narrative. It’s with this that Chazelle’s on-the-nose analysis of artistic development makes itself clearly known, as an invitation of challenge rather than admission of defeat. For Babylon and its co-stars, true permanence may be found in the precedent rather than the product.
